In an instant, he was up and beside her; his hand had roughly grasped her shoulder, half tearing away the cyclas; his little eyes blazed with vindictive fury; his nostrils dilated; his coarse lips writhed in hungry passion.
"Ah, slave! You would escape? Where? where? In this house? Ah, fool! Could you not measure the comedy of this morning? Do you think this old imbecile, this man condemned to follow his mouse-killing son, can protect you from the meanest Nubian in the army? Do you think—ah!" and he raised his hand, as if to strike.
Wrenching herself loose by a quick movement, Marcia turned and faced him with all the blood of the Torquati flushing in her cheeks, all their fire blazing in her eyes.
"Dog of a pulse-eater!" she cried, and he shrank back before the vehemence of her tone. "Do I care what you do? Break your alliance with these people if you wish—an alliance of fools with fools, knaves with knaves! Break it, before it be cloven asunder for you by the sword of Rome. Doubtless your chief will sacrifice all his plans to your cowardly lust. Kill my protector, tear down his house, and—kill me!—me, for whom there is neither sowing nor reaping in this matter."
All his arrogance and violence had vanished, cowed and crushed by her outbreak; but, even as he cringed before her, the gleam of Oriental cunning had taken its place.
"Ah! now, indeed, art thou more beautiful than the lady Tanis," he muttered, clasping and unclasping his hands, as if in ecstasy. "Now, indeed, do I love thee." His voice sank to a whisper, and he glanced about timorously. "And so it is neither sowing nor reaping with you, my pretty?" he went on. "Fools we may be, but not the fools to be blind to your sowing—not the fools who shall not root up your seed before the day of reaping. Did not you, a Roman, counsel Mago to delay? Did you not, foolish one, even give such counsel at the banquet of welcome to the schalischim, until I laughed in my cup to see a silly girl who would cajole men of government and of war?"
Marcia stood, rigid and pale. All her plans seemed shivering about her. She was doomed to fail then—fail after all, through the cunning of these vermin. Still she struggled to retain her composure.
"Liar!" she said. "Do I not know that if you spoke truth I would already be buried under hurdles weighted with stones?"
He laughed softly. "Why?" he asked. "What can you avail, coining lead for us who perceive its falseness? Nay, you are even of use to Hannibal, for, by your very eagerness, he has come to Maharbal's thinking, that all must be done speedily, if we would take Rome. Even now Capuans work night and day building our engines. Soon they will set them up before your gates. We shall winter in Rome, as the guests of the lady Marcia who has invited us. Therefore Hannibal grants you life and to be a comfort to his friend and father, Pacuvius Calavius, in his declining years;" and he laughed again, but harshly and sneeringly.
Marcia could scarcely keep her feet under the crushing force of these blows. In what vain manner had she, an inexperienced girl, blind to all but a noble purpose, contended with men whose cunning had sufficed to snare the chiefs of her people! Worse even, she had herself forged the weapons for the destruction of all she had hoped to save. Iddilcar watched her from under half-closed lids, noting every line of her face, and reading its struggle and its despair.